Google and Amazon to Put More Books on Cellphones

In a move that could bolster the growing popularity of e-books, Google said Thursday that the 1.5 million public domain books it had scanned and made available free on PCs were now accessible on mobile devices like the iPhone and the T-Mobile G1.

Also Thursday, Amazon said that it was working on making the titles for its popular e-book reader, the Kindle, available on a variety of mobile phones. The company, which is expected to unveil a new version of the Kindle next week, did not say when Kindle titles would be available on mobile phones.

There are plenty of people in this country that do have a cell phone and they do use it.

Phone plans are getting cheaper. I had a prepaid phone that was .10 minute to use and I had to buy $30 of minutes every 90 days.

I switched to Cricket and with taxes my bill is $44 a month. Unlimited local and long distance and unlimited Internet. I am very close to canceling my land line which is $30 per month and then having the unlimited cell phone will only be $14 more than the land line.

Google's Book Search has been a controversial background project for most of its four-year life, but its most recent move may see the scheme brought right into the limelight: Google Book Search is now available on the iPhone and Android-based smartphones. And that pitches its 1.5 million-book archive kinda directly against the Amazon Kindle e-reader.

And more e-readers could hit the market soon. They were the talk of the Consumer Electronics Show last month, and during a recent visit with Fortune, Best Buy (BBY, Fortune 500) President Brian Dunn, who owns a Kindle and a Sony Reader, said that while traveling in Asia he learned of two other major companies planning e-reader launches.